


if you were a temple

by terriku



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Trespasser Spoilers, brief mentions of lavellan/cullen, not enough to warrent the tag though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/terriku/pseuds/terriku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>if you were a temple, you were empty by the time I found you</i>
</p><p>After the Exalted Council, Lavellan searches for answers. Abelas has none to offer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	if you were a temple

The Woman They Call a Herald finds Abelas deep in the woods, far beyond the charted maps of Thedas. He is washing his face in a clear river and she is standing on the other bank. Her approach is silent save for the moment she stops. Abelas sees her reflection in the rippling waters of the river first.

He looks up, looks straight at her.

She bows her head in acknowledgement as if she is paying him respects.

He frowns. The little shemlen should not have been able to find him. Hunter, she may be, but he is a Sentinel. Whatever experience she has, he has tenfold, a hundredfold. The Dalish know how to stalk in the shadows, but the Sentinels know how to become shadows. She should not know how to find him.

Abelas stands, slowly, water falling from his hands. She stands very still and does not look away. He straightens his back.

But of course, the Well would have no trouble finding him. None at all. He wonders if the Well has brought her to him. He wonders if the Well has need of him.

Abelas looks at her, the shemlen girl, and wonders.

She stands still as a deer, eyes unwavering. The shadows of the forest fall upon her with such gentleness, they seemed a part of her skin. She makes him wonder – not awestruck for she is no goddess reborn, and human prophets have little meaning to him after all. Rather, there is something about her that makes Abelas wonder what will happen next. Her words still echo in his mind, so young and hopeful, like a seed planted in barren soil. Only now her seed has sprouted and Abelas, after an eternity of certainty, _wonders_.

The river water parts around him. She watches each and every step he takes but does not move. He has given her more chances to leave than necessary. He waits for a summons, some glint of Mythal in her eyes, a command, anything. But the Well says nothing and the little shemlen says nothing. Abelas does not stop though. Even if the Well has no need of him, even if it is not Mythal who beckons him closer, even then he crosses the river to stand in front of her.

“Woman They Call a Herald,” he says. He towers above her, taller by almost a head and a half. How small they are, these people who claim the blood of elvhen. How small and short lived and how they cling to life despite it all.

She looks up, the bronze of his sun-hallowed armor glinting in her eyes, “Abelas.”

 

*

 

“You are not my people,” he had spat once, voice so full of venom.

She hadn’t cared at the time, because in some way, she understood what he had meant. Abelas wasn’t what she’d consider her’s either. Her people were the elves of Clan Lavellan, the hahren and the hunters and the da’len and the Keeper and Elrian. Cian knew what it was to hold some closer than others. She’d hardly felt his rejection at all. And yet.

And yet, the forests they once roamed were quiet. She spent months in the forests looking for any sign. The forests were full of game and the lakes were plentiful but they were empty. Empty and quiet. _Gone. Where did they go? Where did they go?_ Cian had walked the breadth of the Free Marches and only after that did she allow herself to fall to her knees and grasp the dirt in her fists. The cry that tore from her lips sent birds scattering, and the spiteful seed that had sprouted in her belly made her hope Elrian could hear it.

 _Let him hear_ , she had thought, _let him hear and let him know._ But it was a weak mantra that reminded her more of the bleating of a lost calf than anything else.

She’d wandered aimlessly after that. Up towards the border of Antiva, or towards the fringes of Tevinter. If she’d taken a few steps more either way, she would have found Josephine or Dorian, but instead she’d taken a step back into the wilderness. It hurt too much to think of seeing her friends in their homes when her own was gone. She turned south. The only guide she had was the beating of her blood, and even that she let go of. Her feet moved without any thought to direction.

Maybe it was the Well that planted the idea then. Maybe it was the Well who whispered in her soul to find the others like her, displaced and cast out from that which they knew. Maybe it was the Well. Or maybe, she’d tainted the Well with her sorrow and it whispered only what she wanted to hear. Maybe the Well brought her to Abelas.

“You are not my people,” he had spat once. It stings now as a memory more than it ever did before.

And yet, here they are sitting across from the same fire, two weeks into the Arbor Wilds. The rush of memories sours everything it touches. She gives up on the wood she had been carving and feeds it to the fire. Without anything to occupy her attention, her gaze drifts to him.

Abelas tolerates her presence, but barely. He is wary of her. He watches her from a distance, always careful to maintain the space between them. Having seen Abelas before, she wonders how she never questioned Solas before. They share features. They have the same sloping cheek bones, the same regal face, the same height and brawn. The same haughty air, the same downward glance, the same way of looking at her.

They are so similar. How could she have not seen it?

They are both so empty. So hollow. Their kingdom has burned down, their People are nothing more than ashes. They have nothing left to tie them to this world and yet they must still endure.

She wonders if, with the Well inside her, she is any closer to his people now.

She wonders if, with all purpose lost and all duties failed, she is any closer to his people now.

 

*

 

She is anchorless.

Not just the loss of the Anchor, reclaimed from her by its true owner, but something more. Like, like a leaf drifting in a wind or a boat without sails. She is _lost_.

He is at once reminded of the children born after the Fall. Born into a purpose they did not truly understand, and into a world they did not truly know. He remembers the keen edge of sorrow. Then it had sliced into him so deeply it had shorn his name away. When he stopped being him and started being Abelas. He hollowed himself out and filled himself again with anger and sorrow, enough to make up for all that the young ones lacked.

So when she looks at him with eyes full of searching, he almost wants to bite back that he too knows something of loss.

It is entirely too easy to look at her and see what he had once been.

The only difference is that she still keeps her name. It is clenched between her teeth somewhere in all her sorrow and anger, too tightly bound for her to find. But, she still has it. This means more than she knows.

If only someone would tell her this, maybe she would not be so sorrowful.

But Abelas has no intentions of teaching her, this woman the shemlen call a Herald. He has used up his teaching, and she is not his to teach. She does not save him, and he does not teach her. They simply are. They exist, side by side, and they rub against each other’s wounds, but he does not heal her’s and she does not soothe his. She is young. Too young by his standards, a drop of water against the pools of his life. She looks at him for answers, and he looks back, golden eyes as empty as his temple.

Even as she sinks, Abelas knows she will endure.

As he has.

 

*

 

The dreams come unbidden, relentless like the tide, whenever she falls asleep.

Sometimes she dreams of Elrian. She dreams of the aravels and the halla and the people of Clan Lavellan. She dreams of the fire and the songs she used to fall asleep to. She dreams of the Keeper watching over everyone, except instead of Deshanna it was Elrian now.

Sometimes she dreams of Cullen. She dreams of the hills of Honnleath, so quiet and secluded. She dreams of the lake he loved and the sound of stones skipping across the surface. She dreams of the smell of mabari, and the quiet thrum of his laughter. She dreams of waking up beside him, hand tracing familiar scars and tangled in his hair. She dreams of the place he called their home, except now it is only his.

Sometimes she dreams of Skyhold. She dreams of the fortress that they called home, she dreams of it full to the brim. She dreams of the tavern, of ale that tastes like dirt, of the laughter of men. She dreams of the flickering fire in the great hearth, the proud banners streaming in mountain winds. She dreams she walks through the great halls, except now everything was empty.

Always, she dreams of a wolf. He stands at the farthest edges of her dreams, careful to never meet her gaze or to intrude. The first few times she saw him, she’d run towards him with hands outstretched. “Hahren,” she’d said. “Solas,” she’d said, voice cracking. The wolf left before she could ever get closer. Now she knows better. Now, she does not chase after him, does not call out to him, and sometimes does not even meet his gaze. She still talks sometimes. Just because he will not reply does not mean he will not listen.

“Hahren,” she says, “is this what it was like to lose everything you ever loved?”

When he does not reply to that, she dreams of dark forests and blood and fire and ash. She lets her anger and hurt color everything around her until she cannot even see straight. She holds a dagger in her hand and she brings it down over and over and over and over again into the wolf’s carcass. It is not him, but it might have been. Sometimes she stops and bursts into tears, burying her face into the blood fur and begging for forgiveness. Other times she grows numb and turns the blade on herself, to the soft junction of her neck or the place where her heart might have been.

She wonders if he is there too, watching. She wonders if they are similar now.

 

*

 

“You didn’t join Solas.”

It falls out of her one day as if she is merely commenting on the weather.

“No.” The word hangs between them. He twangs a bow string to check its tightness. Cian inspects the fletching of an arrow. The fire burns. He almost believes she will not follow up on her statement.

“Why?”

He set the bow across his lap. _Why_ , she’d asked, but it was such a mortal question. Abelas did not have any answer that could be easily given. He thinks of Mythal, murdered and gone. He thinks of Arlathan, beautiful but cruel. He thinks of the sands of time, of the flow or rivers, ever ceaseless. He thinks of the Well and he thinks of all his brethren who’d died for a whisper in water.

“Some chances, once lost, will not come again.”

The quiet that settles on them now is heavier, like dense fog or sorrow, full of questions unasked and unanswered.

“It was no fault of Fen’harel’s,” is all that he finally offers. Intentionally ambiguous. If she were only a shem, then she would not truly understand, but the Well whispers in her, and the Well knows Abelas better than he perhaps knows himself.

“No,” she agrees, “and it was not yours either.”

After that, they sit in silence until the fire burns down. He turns in before her, but awakens hours later to thrashing. She twists and turns in her sleep, brow caught in a grimace. What nightmares plague her, Abelas knows not. Perhaps she dreams of the fall of Elvhenan, of the murder of Mythal, of a thousand memories the Well once witnessed. Or perhaps she dreams of her own sorrows so tightly clenched that they have become a part of her.

He presses a hand against her forehead and wills her to calm.

By some turn of luck, she does.

 

*

 

There are others. Sentinels that have not answered the Dread Wolf’s call. Some do not wish to leave their posts. Most do not wish to travel with the little shemlen. She does not mind. Not everyone wishes to hunt down a being close to Godhood. Not everyone can stand the company of a being that embodies all their failures.

Abelas calls her da’asha now. The Woman They Called a Herald is simply too long a title, and perhaps he has grown tired of it. They have been traveling together for four months and she supposes it is only normal to grow closer to one’s companions. Her thoughts inevitably run to her friends whom once felt like family and are now so distant, scattered like seeds in the four winds. The thought physically pains her, and she almost stops to catch a breath. Almost, but she does not. It hurts, but it does not kill her, and there are many things that must be done. Abelas looks back at her, she walks on.

The Well leads them from one forgotten sanctuary to another. It has led them to this one, nothing more than a stone pavilion lost in the roots of a great tree. Abelas walks solemnly through the wide halls but Cian looks upon everything with wonder. She sees the edge of a mural in the distance and follows it.

 _Ah_ , the Well says. It is sound of recognition, but it tells her nothing else.

It is only when she traces the mural and feels a rush of pride, of great maternal instinct, of the drowning joy of holding one’s own child in one’s arms, flow through her that she breaks down.

Mythal had this built to celebrate the birth of her firstborn.

Cian thinks, if she had a child, then they would have Cullen’s lion-gold hair and Cullen’s warm eyes and Cullen’s shem ears.

Cian thinks, if she had a child, then they would be a shem too.

The thought is too much to bear and she brings her hands to palm her eyes in a vain attempt to stem the tears. It does little. She does not realize she is shaking until the torch falls from her hands. It clatters against the stone floor and sends sparks of veilfire everywhere and still, she cannot stop.

“Da’asha,” he says, hand hoovering close to her shoulder as if he is not sure if she will crumble under his touch. “Your home is still there, da’asha, you may return at any time.”

And then, because he is a Sentinel, because he was made for blade and bow, he cuts straight to the heart of the matter: “Why do you not return?”

Because, because.

Because she is scared.

Because Cullen is so bright and golden and warm and so stable, so solid. But he is a shem, and he will die and she is scared to think what would happen to her if she were to lose him. She has already lost everything that was ever her’s. How can she stomach another loss? How can she bear it?

They have survived against all odds, but there is no surviving time.

Abelas bends to pick up her falling torch and offers it to her. “Some chances, once lost, will never come again.” She is not sure if he means it as a comfort, as encouragement or as a warning.

He says nothing else. They search the temple in silence. There are murals and inscriptions to be studied, but no Eluvians, and no hints as to what Solas’ plans involve. When night falls, they set up camp and settle into their rolls like clockwork. She fetches supplies, he prepares the meal. The woods around this forgotten shrine are full of game, and so she is back with their dinner in no time at all.

Cian raises her head to the moon. She wonders if the moon looked the same back then, when Arlathan still flourished, or if it was different. It is the only moon she has ever known, and suddenly, she knows what she must do.

When she tells Abelas that she wishes to head for Fereldan, she pretends not to see him smiling into his bowl.

 

*

 

Heading for the place Cullen calls home is both reliving and mortifying. She does not know how to face him. She skirts the forests around Honnleath for days and is simultaneously relieved that Abelas cannot laugh at her indecisions, and wishing he were here to push her forward. In the midmorning sun, she catches sight of Cullen. He comes out of the house in nothing but a linen shirt and simple breeches. The mabari he picked up at Halamshiral follows eagerly at his heels. Seeing him without his armor is so disarming that she almost turns around right then and there.

But the mabari catches her scent before she can escape. The dog lifts his head and lets out a howl, and then Cullen is looking up. He looks to the right, to the left, behind him, in front of him, and he even looks up. Cian freezes. And then he is looking at her. They stare at each and watch, and wait for the other to move, to speak, to do anything at all.

It feels like an eternity.

Cullen moves first. He drops the bucket he’d been holding and takes a step forward. No more, but it is enough. Something in the movement breaks her and she forgets duty and debts and the wolf and the end of the world. She just…sees him.

She flies from the woods like an arrow and jumps into his arms and when she feels the beat of her blood beneath her skin she knows with a certainty that it is her heart and not the Well. Cullen catches her and holds her tight.

“Aneth’ara,” she says. And then again and again and again. She means it.

Cullen does not let go.

 

*

 

Abelas watches her from afar. He scoffs at her indecision and snorts when the mabari sells her out. She is so young, so achingly young. It is only when the man embraces her that he turns away and back to the forest.

 _Shems_ , he thinks with something dangerously akin to fondness.

 

*

 

The next time she meets Abelas, it is in the far reaches of Tevinter. Her shemlen husband stands at her side, hand resting on the pommel of his sword and she has a child in her arms. Her shemlen husband’s eyes narrow, as if he is not sure if Abelas is a threat or an ally. As if he does not believe Abelas can possibly be an ally. Perhaps words may calm him, but Abelas does not care for her shemlen husband.

“Da’asha,” he says.

“Abelas.” She returns, but then she steps towards him and she angles her arms so he can see the child sleeping tenderly in her arms. “Elia,” she says simply. It is nothing compared to the elaborate celebrations of birth he once knew, but it carries no less sincerity, no less pride, no less joy. Here lies the da’len of the da’asha who carries the vir’abelasan within her. If she can exist, then others can too. If the da'asha can pull life out of a barren world, so can the others.

He is a Sentinel of Mythal even if Mythal is dead.

“Mythal enaste.” A blessing pressed against a sleeping child’s forehead. A wish. Live, live freely, live gloriously. The others would have balked at the idea of blessing a shemlen child but this one is of her blood and her blood and the Vir’abelasan were one and the same.

He has failed at protecting everything that was ever his.

His failures are not her’s.

They must not be.

 

*

 

Months pass.

The sunny vale of Honnleath is never her home, but it is Cullen’s and it is Elia's and that is good enough. She divides her life between tracking down Solas, and her family. Sometimes she feels as if the road and the battles suit her more. She feels more herself than ever. But when she returns to Honnleath and Elia runs towards her and flings herself into her arms, Cian wonders how any other future could possibly exist for her.

Elia grows quickly, as children are wont to do. She was but a seed in her stomach four years ago, and now she is a tumbling girl and soon she will grow long and lithe. Her shem daughter knows little of the Dalish ways, even if Cullen tries so hard to teach her. She finds it hard to care. So what if she does not know? So what if she will not have vallaslin? Her daughter will be no less loved, no less treasured, no less _her's_. The Well pulses with something like affection, an attribute of Mythal the Mother she can only suppose. So here she is, the once-Inquisitor, the never-Herald of Andraste, with a shemlen husband and a shemlen daughter, who counted the Divine and a Magister and an almost-God among her friends. It is hard to imagine that nine years ago she had only ever been Cianrelle of Clan Lavellan – a Dalish hunter who knew nothing of the world.

Between Leliana’s people and Dorian’s, between the Grey Wardens and the Chantry, they ferret out at least a hundred of Solas’ people. Few of them speak, but the ones that do point them towards the Dread Wolf. They unravel a dozen plans and set him back a few steps. It is a lot, but it is also not enough. Solas holds all the cards and they do not even know the game.

If ever he is frustrated, he does not show it. His presence in her dreams never changes.

She no longer dreams the dark dreams. If it is because her grief and anger is spent, or for some other reason she cannot really say.

“Hahren,” she says as she summons her memories of Elia. She fills the dream space with them – these moments with her beloved daughter. After that she conjures up Cullen, their friends, Abelas. She has lost everything but there is _more_. There is more for him too, if only he would look. “Is this world not worth saving?”

He leaves the dream very quickly, but she thinks she catches _ir’abelas_ in the wind and it hangs there like a silent, forgone conclusion.

She wakes with a start and tears in her eyes. Cullen wakes too and reaches for her clumsily, eyes still heavy with sleep.

“I did not think he would do it. I did not think he could,” her words catch in her throat and come out a sob.

“We will stop him,” he assures her, “if anyone can stop a crazed, misguided man who believes himself a god, it is you. You did it once before, you can do it again.”

 

*

 

In the end, it is not enough.

Solas tears the Veil down.

Thedas burns.

 

*

 

The ages have emptied them.

He would have once thought, that having lived a thousand shemlen lifetimes, he has lost more than anyone ever could. But the long years of Abelas’ life were spent in the long sleep and. And he does not think it is possible to lose more than their da’asha has lost. Lover and child, torn from her. World burned to a crisp, to a singularity, to a non-existence. Family and clan in dust. Friends dead or dying. Everything she was, everything she had, all, gone.

It is more than any mortal should have to bear.

There is nothing left, but even as Thedas burns and Arlathan rises from her ashes, she looks to him.

“Abelas,” she says, hands pressed against his face as if cupping something precious. He thinks she will ask him to stay with her in these burnt out ashes. He thinks he would. If she asked, he would stay here with her. Instead, she only sighs and says, “dareth shiral.”

He will return, one day, of course. Because she is the vir’abelasan, and he is a Sentinel of Mythal. But for now, he turns towards his resurrected homeland, his brethren, his People, and leaves her to her sorrow and her anger.

She will be inconsolable for ages, but she is not a da’len whose hand must be held. And he is not her hahren. She will endure. Whether or not the Dread Wolf can endure her, well, that is another matter entirely.

But in the decades that follow, she does not fall upon Arlathan in rage. And she does not tear down their cities in sorrow. She neither floods nor burns the world. She sits in solitude and slowly picks up the pieces. It is slow going, but this is not the world of the shemlen. It is the world of the People, and the People do not succumb, not even to time.

One day Abelas comes to the Temple of Mythal and finds her sitting there, in the basin which once held the Well of Sorrows. Or perhaps still did. Maybe the years had worn her down and nothing remained save the voices of the Well.

Abelas bows his head in acknowledgement as if paying his respects.

She looks up, sunlight catching in her bright eyes, “Abelas,” she says. “Aneth ara.”

It is a singular voice, and one that he knows. "Da'asha," he returns.

The ages have emptied them, others have come and torn down their walls and spilled whatever lay within. Their sanctums lay cracked and despoiled, trampled by betrayal and duty and the passing years. And yet.

They live on.


End file.
